Technologists often solve tech problems technically–often in Hackathon Presentations we see the emphasis in on the technology and enabling platforms, not the idea, and even with a clearly stated solution there’s an under-representation on the beauty/design/story-telling-quality creativity over functional execution. This is an opportunity for teams IMO.

General recognition that discovery is a central issue, not data availability–many of the apps at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon were about finding food, music, friends and even drinking buddies more easily demonstrating how much we’re in the early innings of this evolution of the platform

Notification/delivery is another common theme

Couple of good gamer hacks, but not many. Good way to infuse presentations and solutions w/entertainment.

Reactions to specific demos (did not see all of them yet, btw) in order of presentation:

Advise.ly—find advisors in linkedin. Actually really like this idea. Shows discoverablity issue in professional socialnets still has room to evolve

Nofacebook—puts sunglasses & sick mask over photos to anonymize/privacize–humorous solution to a small problem

Heat Data, Jason Shah, Product manager from Yammer—heatmap of how people navigate your mobile web before they click. Awesome. Really like this. Jason, if you’re reading, take this to MSoft’s analytics group or create a startup to make this happen. NOTE: Turns out I’m not alone in this thinking–Jason’s demo took runner-up #2 at the event

CardRoullette –who pays for dinner? Fun solution to ongoing issue of friends and acquaintances on who picks up the bill.

Bzzzz—restaurant pager system w/twillio API allowing for people to return at the right time (that’s 4Zs)

Project Care—become virtual guardian to the child, see other sponsors, watch child grow, etc. Love this & think they should take the idea to Hank Fortener’sAdoptTogether initiative to enrich features of this great cause

Miles—Neil Mansilla from Mashery pitching w/team to connect users w/similar interests. Neil is always great to watch and adds a lot of value to API evangelism–he’s a gold-standard developer & evangelist.

Were you able to check out the demos? Any others stand out for you? Pls post in comments below.